


Swimming in the Flood

by regentzilla



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-26
Updated: 2014-07-16
Packaged: 2018-02-06 07:02:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1848838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regentzilla/pseuds/regentzilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the middle of the night and Dave is stepping out for a smoke on the balcony.</p><p>After the Tanker Mission, and then after the Plant Mission, Otacon remembers the taste of water and smoke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tanker

**Author's Note:**

  * For [umbrulla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/umbrulla/gifts).



> Inspired by [this doodle](http://umbrulla.tumblr.com/post/89046886361/its-the-middle-of-the-night-and-dave-is-stepping)! Thanks for dragging me back in with you, ya nerd

It's the middle of the night and Dave is stepping out for a smoke on the balcony. His path across the tight-packed and untidy apartment takes him from the couch where he sleeps, past the coffee table littered with empty cigarette packets and mostly empty mugs, right overtop of Hal's air mattress. If he hadn't already been awake there's no way he would have noticed— Dave's bare feet are completely silent against the carpet. Even in the dark and without his glasses Hal can see the way the muscles in his calves slide beneath his skin, the paler curve of his thighs illuminated by distant city lights when the blinds swish open. It's been strange, living with Snake. Hal feels like he needs to apologize and avert his eyes when he catches Dave doing something domestic— cooking, washing dishes, listening to the news on the radio in his boxers and a ratty t-shirt with a cigarette smouldering between his fingers.

He wonders as cool night air sweeps in across the floor, makes him draw the blanket closer, if Dave is having trouble sleeping.

Hal certainly is.

Maybe what he needs is to step outside, get a little fresh air. Mostly fresh. Even sour exhaust and nicotine-tar would be better than the bile and salt he can still taste in his sinuses after weeks of fitful sleep. He dreams about dragging Snake's limp weight out of the water, breathing into his blue lips until Snake jolts and vomits seawater right into Otacon's mouth. It makes him think about other people who have drowned.

His legs are beginning to sweat under the unzipped sleeping bag he's using as a blanket, and it reminds him a little too much of the feeling of his clothes plastered to his body by rain that drove down hard enough to sting. With a deep, shaky sigh and a quick rub of knuckles over his eyes he kicks himself free and stands, padding across the tacky 70s-brown carpet to the sliding door that leads to the balcony.

Snake doesn't react when Hal opens the door, and not because he hasn't noticed. If Hal is going to surprise him it'll be by accidentally dropping an incoherent Evangelion reference into a conversation, not by out-stealthing him.

He doesn't even spare a glance when Hal leans on the balcony railing next to him, and Hal takes the moment to drink in his profile, lit by the cigarette's warm-glowing tip as he takes a drag. For a moment he's visible, from the loose strands of hair over his forehead to the stubble crawling down his throat, before he sinks back into the shadows and exhales.

“Can't sleep?” Hal offers.

“Hm.”

“Me neither.” Assuming that was a yes. “I wish I could, but I just... it's weird. I've been in worse situations, but I keep thinking about...”

Dave doesn't respond but Hal gets the feeling from the silence that he knows.

"Have you... ever had that happen before? Not the whole thing, the tanker, just... after..." Hal gestures at his mouth and throat. “When I had to...”

Just the CPR. The headlights of cars on the distant bridge are turned into a river by Hal's sleepy brain, his tiredness and poor eyesight working in tandem to drag lazy trails behind things as they move, as he looks around sluggishly. Dave's being very patient with Hal's slightly foggy interrogation, probably owing no small thanks to the nicotine that Hal can feel in his throat just standing next to him. It's a rush— not electric and morish like caffeine but comfortable, hazy.

“Just once, outside of VR training,” Dave finally replies. “Broke a couple ribs.”

A chill quivers down Hal's back.

“I didn't hurt you, did I? I never... I never thought to ask...”

A quick pull on his smoke reveals that the corners of Snake's usually grim mouth are curved upward, just slightly. “Nah. You couldn't hurt me if you tried.”

The words are teasing but gentle. Hal smiles a little in the darkness as well, just for a moment, before turning his gaze down to his arms, folded on the cold steel railing. It feels like his intestines are a python coiled around his stomach, squeezing bile up to the back of his throat.

“I have nightmares where I can taste the water,” he blurts. And then quietly, “It's disgusting.”

“You try toothpaste?” Blunt, but not uncaring. 

“I brush until I get a toothpaste headache. Doesn't work. It's psychosomatic.”

Dave pauses and Hal wonders if he's as impressed as Hal himself is that he managed 'psychosomatic' at whatever unholy hour it is. Without a few pots of coffee he's useless at night.

“Here,” says Dave, takes a brief pull on the quickly shortening remnants of his cigarette, and holds it out to Hal with two fingers. “Try this.”

“That's disgusting too, Dave.”

“Exactly.”

Skeptical, Hal accepts the cigarette and examines it, filter to tip, then sucks. For a moment he notices that it's still slightly warm from Dave's lips before his breath goes right through his mouth, up his nose and into his windpipe and he coughs the smoke back out in a great puff, hacking and spitting over the railing. Over his own noises he hears Dave bark a single note of a laugh as he takes the butt back.

“Good job,” says Dave, patting Hal on the back. This time the gesture is maybe a little more patronizing than comforting but Hal still takes away mostly the latter. “Go back inside and get some sleep, I'm gonna have another.”

The slow burn of smoke lingers in his throat until his first cup of coffee the next morning. His dreams aren't exactly idyllic fields and sunshine but he doesn't wake up sweating and heaving, even when Dave steps back over him and falls asleep on the couch, perfectly still.


	2. Plant

It's the middle of the night— in the permafrost-north of Canada that means the haze of the summer sun is just barely dancing against the horizon— and Otacon is standing outside, holding a cigarette in one rounded mitten and a lighter in the other, trying very hard to figure out how to make this whole thing work without acquiring frostbite along the way.

And he really is hoping it'll work. It's different than last time, though, there's more than a nauseating taste in his mouth— he's running calculations in his mind, constantly going over the chopper's design specs, wondering if just one more person would have really made that much of a difference.

The last time he smoked he'd narrowly escaped reliving the single most devastating experience of his life, and this time he's living through it again, alongside the families of the hostages that he left behind. The thought is enough to churn Hal's stomach like an electric mixer.

When the door opens behind Hal, he hears it. Dave's been the victim of so many spilled cups of coffee that he's trained himself to be a little noisy sometimes— the door handle turns roughly and the snow that's already drifted against the cabin whuffs and crunches underneath a pair of boots.

Before Hal can stuff the stolen smoke and lighter in his pockets or throw them into a snowbank, Dave's spotted them and raised an eyebrow at Hal, just slightly.

It occurs to him that, though safe, the north was a cruel location to set up a bolt hole— the last time Dave was here it was with Meryl and his dogs and a drinking problem. The thought that Dave is feeling the same way as he is occurs to Hal, that in their sleep they might both be going over mistakes they've made and waking up to see them all but plastered over the walls, but it's promptly derailed by Dave prying the slightly crushed cigarette and frosty lighter out of his mittens.

With practiced ease he's able to rub some warmth into the lighter and flick it to life, his hands cupped around the flame and unburdened by knitwear, and the exhale of smoke is mixed with the fine crystals of his breath.

"I know you're a bit of a stickler about this, but if you're gonna take up smoking you might wanna do it indoors."

“Oh, please. I'm fine.”

In response Dave just grunts. Any levity in the conversation dries up in an instant.

Hal pauses and listens to the wind fill the space between them with a thin whistle. “I know Big Shell was technically a success, but for me it just... it wasn't.”

“So you're smoking?”

“It helped last time I tried it,” sighs Hal. “After the Tanker I was having nightmares, remember, until you gave me one of your cigarettes. It's a bad idea, I'll probably get addicted or burn the house down.”

“Nah. It's a pretty good one actually. I can think of worse things you could be doing.”

Hal hums thoughtful. He can feel his lips cracking and the moisture in his nose freezing. He never used to be so sensitive to the cold— he blames himself for getting used to the weather south of the 49th parallel. In that sense he almost wishes they were back in the humid city.

“And if it gets you off my ass about smoking then I definitely approve.”

That earns him a mittened whap on the arm.

Hal sighs and takes a moment to uncrumble his thoughts. “I hate that even when missions go well at least one person gets caught in the crossfire. Metaphorically. And literally, I guess.”

“Nothing ever ends up with the good guys winning and the bad guys losing.”

“Exactly.” Hal scrubs at his nose, leaving it instantly raw and sore. Snake doesn't even look bothered by the cold— his cheeks aren't pink from exposure, he isn't snuffling and snorting or stomping his feet to make sure they're still attached. If that's because of his genetically thicker skin or because he's just not showing his discomfort Hal isn't sure. He wishes he could be as effortlessly stoic as Snake.

Dave offers up the cigarette between two fingers, dexterous despite the temperature. “You should probably get it over with and go back in, you don't look too great.”

Hal splutters out a laugh. “I'll skip the cigarette, I can't really feel my lips anymore. Or my fingers.”

In response, Dave leans in close and blows smoke across Hal's face, breath warm but nicotine-acrid. Hal nearly falls over backwards, hands swatting at the smoke and then reeling to keep his balance. Thankfully a hand catches his wrist and tugs him upright again. He's on his way to the door before Dave can get too much of a smirk on, numb feet and thick boots making his stomping into more of a waddle.

“That was disgusting!”

“Disgusting worked last time.”

Dave closes the door behind them and Hal tears off his gloves and hat, shaking out his hair and hissing at the sting of stove-warmed air against his skin. “Last time there was a purpose, you're just being gross!”

Before Hal is even out of his boots, Dave leaves his snowy clothes at the door and makes a beeline to the fire in the fat belly of the stove, draping his scarf over Hal's head as he goes.

“Feeling any better?” says Dave, stretching to take a worn iron poker from its hook on the wall and then crouching to open the stove's tiny door and prod life into the fire. Even through the thickness of his clothes Hal can see the strength in his legs, the way his shoulders roll sinuous and easy.

“A little, yeah.”

“You get used to it.” His voice almost startles Hal— he wasn't expecting anything more than a noise of acknowledgement, maybe an admonition for still being awake after god knows how many hours. “It's still horrible but eventually you learn how to deal with it. At the end of the day you're doing good work, you're saving lives. You just have to make the lives caught in the crossfire worth something.”

The ensuing silence is bracketed by the gentle snaps of the fire and the wind fighting to find cracks in the walls of the tiny two-room cabin. Hal stands staring at Dave until his soggy boots start leaving a puddle on the floor.

“You should get some sleep. I haven't seen you in bed in nearly two days.”

There it is.

“I'm used to pulling all nighters,” Hal retorts, finally spurred into peeling off the rest of his snowy outerwear.

“You lost track of time because the sun isn't setting, didn't you.”

Hal balls up Dave's scarf and chucks it at his back as he walks past. “No comment. Goodnight.”

“Good morning, technically.”

“Goodnight!”

Hal stays awake, lying in bed and watching the flicker of light in the adjacent room until Dave closes the thick stove door with a tiny squeak of protest from the hinges— he'll be oiling that first thing in the morning, Hal guesses— and sneaks into the room, past Hal's quilt-heavy cot to settle into his own. He falls asleep quickly, and it's hard to tell without glasses on but he seems peaceful.

It doesn't take long for Hal to drift off as well, despite the lingering chill in his fingers and toes. He dreams about the taste of smoke in Dave's mouth and the quiet of the balcony in New York.


End file.
